While I wouldn't go so far as to call today a "break" from traditional blog coverage, I will say that DC and/or Marvel can hit the showers for the day. Heck, I'm not even going to be bringing up Image, or Valiant, or even Dark Horse! (I should take some time to figure out some Dark Horse-related topics, soonish...) I deliver to you a creation that originally saw birth at Eternity Comics in 1991, but later was the founding father of a self-published company, Chaos Comics. I'm talking about a guy so evil, Bert would probably have his intestines wreathed around his lil' upright spike poof of hair. A creature that possesses undying devotion to a Death personification... with rather large, er, "assets". A monster that can control the dead, and LOVES creating that status to begin with. Meet Ernest Fairchild, otherwise known to comic collectors throughout the 90's and 2000's as Evil Ernie.
I initially met Evil Ernie through the trade paperback of his first mini-series. All due credit to his creators, Brian Pulido and Steven Hughes, they had a product I was ALL ABOUT at that stage of my life. If it had to deal with zombies and insane gore, I HAD to have me sommathat! (Yes, I composed that word on the spot.)
What we learn in that first story is that Ernest Fairchild had a miserable childhood. Abused, and different for his telekinetic abilities, he would enter the path of psychiatric care by way of nearly destroying his mother, and his parents deciding they would rather foist this unusual child into state care than accepting him. But being a borderline psychotic does possess some perks, because thanks to his psychic talents, he was able to pierce the veil of reality for subconscious communication with his new "friend", Lady Death. How to best describe Lady Death...
Well... Basically if you start with a cheesecake model physique, inflate her chest five times more large than it normally would, and drain her of all coloration, there you go. And I won't delve too far into Lady Death's story arc, because that's not the active goal of today's blog entry. (Plus, I've only ever read one trade paperback of her adventures, along with appearances in "Chaos Quarterly".) But she sees something special in Ernest Fairchild. And since Thanos is busy with that other Death chick, Lady Death waits for the proper key to make Ernest her Earthbound instrument of chaos and "mega-death".
How that comes about is Ernest is subjected to an experimental device that might help rehabilitate his mental stability. A naive and caring nurse gives him a gift for the occasion: a smiley-face pin. Smiley, as it will be called, plays an IMPORTANT part in Ernie's unlife, because the machine fries Ernie, and Lady Death uses that button as the mystical energy conduit for Ernie to use to resurrect himself. Welcome to the world Evil Ernie!
His abilities include his already-existing telepathy, a regenerative factor that would make Wolverine jealous... at the time, enhanced strength, manipulation of his mystic powers... and resurrection of the dead he kills. And this element makes him a lil' bit Joker-like. You see, from Ernie's appearance, you can tell he is just THRILLED to be a supernatural killing machine. Well, so are his victims, because when they come back to life, they also carry a maniacal grin to match Ernie's. Now in my reading experiences with Evil Ernie, I didn't pick up how the animated corpses that kill living beings are able to bring them back to life. Either it's Ernie that administers to their resurrection, himself, or Lady Death picks up on the slaughter, and acts to shunt these meat-sacks into action.
You may also notice that upon unlife, Ernie has an impeccable fashion sense. He's obviously forgone the Grunge style of his creative period, and still stuck with the 80's Thrash Metal stylings of unruly hair and leather jackets. But being that his genesis was part of the 90's, so came many of the tropes of the comics of the time. People LOVED their "cool" bad guys around then, and while the first Evil Ernie storyline could've been taken as a one-and-done affair, Pulido saw the potential... and sales figures... for the character, and kept finding ways to keep him in action, swimming in the blood of innocents. I also feel that his story became unnecessarily complicated as the appearances went on. It was one thing to bring him back to life... again... and have him fight his former psychologist, who possessed a mech-suit for their physical confrontation, but it was another thing for Ernie to be recruited by Lady Death to handle her difficulties in managing Hell. However, that did lead Ernie to meeting the other Chaos Comics luminaries, such as Cremator, and the red-skinned variant of the balloony breasted Lady Death: Pergatori.
He even made time to star in a two-part parody story that featured superhero and super villain pastiches being slaughtered by the skeletal hands of Ernest. But like all phenoms that were birthed in the 90's, as the 2000's wore on, the appeal of the character faded for a stretch. According to my research, there was a period of rebirth for the Evil Ernie character in the the mid-00's via Devil's Due Publishing, and crossing the character over with "Hack/Slash". (I wouldn't know, because... shocking confession time... I found "Hack/Slash" to be kind of boring after a few story arcs.) But 2012 proved you can't keep an undead serial killer down for long, and under the auspices of Dynamite Comics, Evil Ernie lived... AGAIN.
What is it that has kept Evil Ernie going to our near recent times, despite many fits and starts of his lifetime? I believe it's because like all Horror-based icons, they are never truly dead. And yes, I would rank Evil Ernie in that list... especially on the comics front... because his creation was a result of the culture of Horror fans that appreciated the splatter and gore that was predominant in the VHS wilds of the 1980's. There will always be room for the "splatterpunk" spirit, and while Ernie may occasionally be down, Smiley will make sure he's never 100% out.
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